I have personally tried to pretty much let the whole MAC Defender trojan thing pass by, since we're not a security website. However, we have an interesting turn of events this week. An article over at Ars Technica quotes several anonymous Apple Store employees as saying that the infection rate of Macs brought into the Apple store has gone up considerably. More interestingly though, Apple's official policy states that Apple Store employees are not allowed to talk about infections to anyone - they're not even allowed to inform Mac owners if they find the infection without the customer's knowledge. Another interesting tidbit: Apple mandates the use of Norton Antivirus on company Macs, according to one Apple Store genius.

Right, so they should advise _everybody_ to run Norton just because some people download an install a shady app? We’re not talking about viruses here, we’re talking about user responsibility. No software can protect against users making poor judgements, and even when it tries they can often ignore it. I’ve seen people switch the AV off because it was preventing them from downloading something.

Apple’s policy here might be akin to sticking its head in the sand, but it’s still saner than stating that all Mac users should buy Norton.